Marines have a role in war on terror, top Marine says

CAMP PENDLETON -- The top Marine Corps general said Monday that
his Marines are ready for the war against suspected terrorists in
Afghanistan or elsewhere, although he declined to discuss any
specifics.

The war "is going to be fought in many different places," Gen.
James L. Jones, the commandant of the Marine Corps, said after a
ceremony at the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base. "We understand
that there is just not a military solution. … It's political, it's
diplomatic. It's not going to be limited, for example, to the
Persian Gulf."

Military operations continued Monday with daytime bombing raids
by U.S. and British warplanes over Afghanistan, where U.S.
officials are targeting terrorist networks linked to suspected
mastermind Osama bin Laden and the Taliban-led militia
government.

Nearly 30,000 U.S. forces are in the region, including 1,200
Army soldiers in Uzbekistan at Afghanistan's north border, a naval
armada of four aircraft carriers that includes three carrier battle
groups, and a British flotilla of warships.

The Marine Corps' footprint in the military operation includes
the 2,100-member 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is deployed
on the USS Peleliu, USS Comstock and USS Dubuque somewhere in the
Arabian Sea south of Pakistan. Military officials won't say if
those forces participating in the exercise would be absorbed into
the larger anti-terrorists missions.

Another 2,200 Marines from Camp Pendleton and other Southern
California bases have joined up with the East Coast-based 26th
Marine Expeditionary Unit in Egypt for multinational war games
throughout the month -- putting them one order away from the war
zone -- officials said.

The 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which left home Aug. 13, is
participating in the military operation called Enduring Freedom.
Military officials have declined to discuss the nature of that
participation.

Jones, 57, the Marine Corps' service chief and a member of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that naval maritime forces, such as
Marine expeditionary units, that routinely deploy overseas give
military commanders the advantage of having a force that's ready
for combat -- and already overseas.

Forces "that can go in and go very quietly and very quickly….are
going to be the force of choice," he said.

Jones, a four-star general, is a 34-year veteran who fought in
Vietnam, where he earned two Bronze Stars, led Marines in a relief
mission in Northern Iraq and later served on a top military staff
overseeing military operations in Bosnia.

In spring 1991, he was commanding the 24th MEU when he got the
call to help in the humanitarian effort to help Kurdish refugees
amassed in Northern Iraq at the end of the Persian Gulf War. The
Marines joined a U.S. and allied force that set up a safe haven of
camps to feed and resettle 750,000 refugees.

Jones said the new threats that the United States faces require
a new way of thinking how to fight the enemy and a new "state," he
said. "You have to be quick."

Forces will have to operate quietly in order to get tactical
surprise, he added.